The invention relates to a community antenna television arrangement for the reception and distribution of TV signals and digital audiosignals, particularly those signals which are transmitted by satellite, comprising a head end, connected to a receiving antenna and a signal distribution network, a time-division multiplex signal which comprises said digital audio signals in a time-division multiplex distribution being applied to said head-end, which time-division multiplex signal is modulated on a sound carrier, and also to a receiver for connecting to such a community antenna television arrangement.
The above-mentioned community antenna television arrangement is known from the report `Investigation of Sound Program Transmission via TV Broadcast Satellites", published by AEG-Telefunken in November 1979.
In this report the prior art community antenna television arrangement is described in connection with a method for the transmission of digital audio signals via broadcast satellites. In this transmission method, designated method D in the report, n digital audio signals to be transmitted are assembled in an earth-based transmitter station to form a time-division multiplex signal which is modulated on a sound carrier of approximately 18 GHz and transmitted to a geostationary broadcasting satellite. There the frequency of the modulated time-division multiplex signal is converted to a frequency region near 12 GHz and transmitted after a predetermined signal amplification to an earth-based receiving station. In this earth-based receiving station a frequency conversion to a frequency region near 1 GHz is effected and the time-division multiplex signal is applied to a head end which forms part of the community antenna television arrangement. Herein the modulated time-division multiplex signal is in its totality converted to a frequency region between 68 and 87.5 MHz and thereafter applied via the signal distribution network to a plurality of receivers which, for processing the received time-division multiplex signal, must comprise a tuning device, a demultiplexer, a selection device and a digital/analog converter.
In this transmission method D, the transmission capacity in the satellite path, that is to say the path between the earth-based transmitter station and the earth-based receiver station is much greater than the transmission capacity of the community antenna television arrangement. By maximizing the last-mentioned transmission capacity, the overall transmission capacity, that is to say the transmission capacity from earth-based transmitter station to the subscribers' connection to the community antenna television arrangement can be optimized.